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An Analysis Of Narrative In Chinese Popular Culture

Posted on:2009-09-02Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:W LiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360272458023Subject:Literature and art
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Since the late 1980s, with the establishment of the market economic system, cultural transformation has taken place in China, Popular Culture develops with an unprecedented speed and has a great influence on the society. The research of Popular Culture in China is deeply affected by western studies as far as object selection, problem solution and theory adoption are concerned. However, the development of Chinese Popular Culture has its characteristics and the studies track the following steps: "uncritical transplantation or copying from the western" to "serious examination of native Chinese Popular Culture phenomena". How to put the analysis of single cases and theories into an overall study? That is the problem confronted almost every researcher. Through the analysis of narrative characteristics of Chinese Popular Culture, this paper tries to argue the occurring circumstances and realistic performance of Chinese Popular Culture and grasp the properties and characteristics of it, so as to promote continuous maturing of the study through theoretical discussion and practical criticism.This paper develops the arguments in five sections:Based on clarifying the scope of Daily Life, the first section points out that Popular Culture takes Daily Life as well as imagination originating from Daily Life as its narrative object and theme, and the natural property of Popular Culture emerges from its full confirming of the noumenon status and value of Daily Life. (1) Through clarifying the scope of Daily Life in philosophy and the theory of consumption society, the paper argues that in the field of philosophy and sociology, Daily Life tracks the following steps: "depending on non-daily life" to "establishing its noumenon status". Also this part analyzes the existing state and characteristics of Daily Life. Proceeding from concrete Chinese context, the paper makes a comparison between Daily Life in Elite Culture and Mainstream Culture, and Daily Life in Popular Urban Literature and Popular Culture: because of the needs of revolution or enlightenment, Elite Culture and Mainstream Culture tend to shelter, remove, criticize or upgrade ordinary Daily Life, in contrast, Popular Urban Literature embodies its close ties with Daily Life as far as content, operation and motivation are concerned. Since the 1980s, Popular Culture highlights the specific emotional Daily Life, describes people's ideas, senses, desires and even imaginations, and shows its affirmation of Daily Life's own value, which is inevitable due to the economic, social, historical development of contemporary China. (2) With "Process" as the mainstay, Popular Culture recognizes the noumenon status and value of Daily Life, and on the whole the narrative is developed on two levels: one is facing the realistic existence of Daily Life, the other is depicting the masses' dreams in their Daily Life. In concrete text producers may stress one level or blend the two together. There are two types of texts facing the realistic existence of Daily Life: one is reflecting the civilian consciousness, the other is promoting the petty-bourgeois interests. And both take Daily Life as their narrative object, recognize that meanings and sentiment are embodied in the trivial Daily Life, and also reflect the masses' understandings of life. As the imagination of Daily Life, the texts depicting the masses' dreams of Daily Life are a kind of illusion which bridges ideal and reality. Usually producers of these texts tailor the real phenomena in Daily Life, or cover the rough and unreasonable factors in the form of history, martial arts or fantasy texts, which all play a role of mental compensation for the masses. Thus Popular Culture texts become an entrance for the masses to examine their experience in Daily Life.The second section develops the argument of the narrative structure of Popular Culture text: plot mode and emotion mode, the latter is an extension to the former one. (1) When Popular Culture texts choose Daily Life and imagination originating from Daily Life as its narrative object and theme, resultantly plot mode becomes a dominant factor of the narrative structure, and as a continuously changing "Process" is presented, the plot's own meaning and value for the masses appear more prominent. Elite Culture puts more emphasis on innovation, while the mature solid narrative mode of Popular Culture texts appears easier to be accepted by the masses. Popular Culture admits the original meaning of plot mode, which is precisely confirmed by repetitive narrative types. Whether considering the accepting mentality of the audience or on terms of relationships between Daily Life and dreams, texts of certain types stage a kind of narrative format, reflect changes in times, society and culture, and these types have their own cultural meanings and value. At the same time, Popular Culture texts promote self-maturing by innovations, such as strengthening the audience's participation, integration of types and blending of different cultural and ideological conflicts, in this way texts of certain types show their internal tensions. (2) When producers of Elite Culture make choices of emotion models, they pay more attention to breaking through traditional plot modes and upgrading artistic taste. In contrast, Popular Culture stresses individual subjectivity in contemporary Chinese context, highlighting the experience and expression of emotions, with its full recognition of release of present real feelings of Daily Life. As an extension of plot mode in the narrative texts of Popular Culture, emotion model usually has narrative clues of traditional texts and pays more attention to the description of personal sense and emotions, and feelings and emotions play a vital role in the plot development. No matter what kind of method is chosen, the emotion model of Popular Culture texts embodies consistency with the masses' experience of Daily Life. The third section probes into the concrete characteristics and meanings of Popular Culture as far as the narrative time and narrator are concerned, based on the analysis of state and characteristics of Daily Life. (1) While dealing with time sequence, as the assisting of linear time narrative, narrative in sequence and flashback are preferred; restoration and expansion of time are the most popular ways to deal with time duration. Narrative in sequence and restoration of time embody consistency with Daily Life in appearance, while flashback and expansion of time show their internal consistency with Daily Life as far as mental mechanism is concerned, which is more favorable to emotion presentation. Also the repeated narrative mechanism embodies consistency with the masses' Daily Life that is full of repeated thinking and practice. (2)From Wayne Clayson Booth to James Phelan, the rhetorical research methods of narrative voice are constantly developing. It's confirmed that there are connections between the narrator's properties and the narrative effect. A large amount of producers of Popular Culture texts choose first person "I" as their narrator, which has special meanings in concrete Chinese cultural context: the voice of first person "I" not only is a kind of narrative voice of subjective feelings and emotions, but also embodies consistency with the dominant voice in the social transformation period as far as prominent individual subjectivity is concerned. By the choice of first person "I", an individual in the masses, producers of texts reveal the masses' ideology in a more obvious way, and drift apart from elite consciousness and mainstream consciousness; On the other hand, while there is collision, there is compatibility between the masses awareness and the mainstream consciousness. In addition, the narration from first person has particular narrative effects. Thus no matter narrative time or narrative voice is concerned, Popular Culture texts always fully recognize and stress its consistency with Daily Life, devotion of emotion and individual desire of participation.In the forth section of the paper, the author takes the narrative discourse and code of Popular Culture as her analysis objects and probes into the perceptual narrative and diversified distribution of narrative codes in Popular Culture texts. (1) The existence of Daily Life is perceptual and through a large amount of concrete particular description of perceptual life modality, details as well as language, highlighting sense experience and specific feelings, the perceptual narrative in Popular Culture texts expresses lifelike experience and feelings belong to this era. The directness acting on people's sense is emphasized, which makes it easier to understand and handle. Full expression of emotions and desires of contemporary social person and highlighting the symbolic meaning of "Substance" in Daily Life with details are widely used. As the most centralized expression of perceptual narrative, body narrative on one hand embodies subversion of the taboo of body presentation, on the other hand demonstrates the symbolic meaning of commodity; desire, pleasure and amusement are presented. Popular Culture's pastime nature is fully expressed in perceptual narrative while new living views and consuming cultural landscape emerge from the texts. (2) The audience is active and diversified narrative codes are embodied in Popular Culture texts. When we adopt the Five Codes theory from Roland Barthes to analyze Popular Culture texts, we can find out that the most prominent codes are hermeneutic code, proairetic code and connotative code, with cultural code lesser and symbolic code least. In Popular Culture texts the selection and arrangement of narrative codes put more emphasis on offering sense experience for the audience; the appearance of mixed media narrative, such as novels with many drawings and multimedia novels, has confirmed this. In an era of consumption and media, various kinds of signifiers of Popular Culture texts bring us a banquet of sense and symbolic features are embodied as well, which dominate the conversion between codes or symbols and realities.The fifth section analyzes the intertextuality of Popular Culture and points out that for Popular Culture texts, the intertextuality is not merely a kind of narrative tactics or skills, and it has more noumenon meanings and reflects the recreational and revelry specialties of Popular Culture. (1) With analysis on intertextuality theory, we can find out that the theory development is inseparable from the understanding of "Intertextuality", and it's a general theory which is also labeled as a practical method. The intertextuality concerned with parody and collage is especially prominent in Popular Culture, resulting in a nonlinear reading method, thus the masses release their emotions and acquire mental pleasure. In this course the masses tend to remove various kinds of voice and events from their original context, usually stress the relevance with realistic Daily Life, and put more emphasis on the pastime function of texts. (2) With the flourishing development of Popular Culture, different kinds of media are used as far as intertextuality is concerned: the Interaction of "Language - Picture" is most popular, and the intertextuality and conversion between visual and novel texts have their own characteristics. We find more and more hypertexts between electronic media and traditional media, resulting in hyperlinks between different Popular Culture texts, even having direct effects on the masses' Daily Life. The intertextuality brings us diversified reception activities, and the masses' attendance is highlighted in both intertextual texts and super texts. Only the masses participate in such kind of activities, can they grasp its meaning, and the uninhibited revel fully expresses the entertainment function of Popular Culture.With its full recognition of the noumenon status and meaning of Daily Life, Popular Culture texts present life and establish narrative according to the state and characteristics of the masses' Daily Life. The analysis of narrative of Chinese Popular Culture would help us to comprehend Chinese Popular Culture phenomena and facilitate the theory study of Chinese Popular Culture.
Keywords/Search Tags:Popular Culture, Narrative, Daily Life, Code, Intertextuality
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